Indian River; Felix Fork; Snyder Creek Mine, Hughes Mining District, Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area, Alaska, USAi

Regional Level Types
Indian River; Felix Fork; Snyder Creek Mine	Mine
Hughes Mining District	Mining District
Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area	Census Area
Alaska	State
USA	Country

Location: This placer mine is on the Indian River west of Indian Mountain. The area of placer mining extends downstream on Indian River for about 3 to 4 miles from its junction with Black Creek. The coordinates are near a landing strip about midway along the mined area. The location is accurate. Felix Fork and Snyder Creek are included with the Indian River occurrence as they were probably mined with Indian River. Mining activity was limited on these creeks and their exact locations are indeterminate other than Snyder Creek is said to be a headwater tributary of Indian River. Synder Creek may be the same as Black Creek (HU022).
Geology: Placer gold was discovered along the Indian River in 1909 and mining began in 1911(Eakin, 1914). The auriferous gravels extend from the headwaters of Indian River downstream for a distance of 5 miles (Heiner and Wolff, 1968). The paying gravels were in the modern stream channel and were about 50 feet wide and 2 to 6 feet thick. Bedrock along the productive portion of the stream is predominantly Cretaceous granodiorite and quartz monzonite. The intrusives cut Jurassic(?) and Cretaceous andesite, tuff, graywacke and mudstone. Several pan-concentrate and placer samples several locations along Indian River contain fine to coarse gold (Kurtak and others, 2002)a sample of one of these placer samples contains returned values of 24 ppm gold, 225 ppm molybdenum, and 1127 ppm tungsten. There are at least two known lode mineral occurrences (HU023, HU021) along the mined section of Indian River, but no nearby large alteration zones or other obvious sources of the placer gold in Indian River have been found (Joesting, 1942; Miller and Ferrians, 1968). The source may be lode deposits along Black Creek (HU021), where rock samples at an intrusive contact showed anomalous gold (Kurtak and others, 1999).
Workings: Surface mining beginning in the early 1900's, included some large-scale mining.
Age: Quaternary.
Production: Total production between 1911 and 1915 was 5,154 ounces of gold and 653 ounces of silver (Eakin, 1916). Total production is unknown but probably more than 10,000 ounces (Cobb and Miller, 1981). Large scale mining ended in 1961 and all mining ended in 1965.

Commodities (Major) - Au; (Minor) - Ag, Mo, W
Development Status: Yes
Deposit Model: Placer Au (Cox and Singer, 1986; model 39a)

Other Databases

Link to USGS - Alaska:	HU024

Other Regions, Features and Areas containing this locality

References